Nice guys finish last.
There's not being a dick, and then there's being a doormat. You don't want to be close to either of those extremes.
3,116 karma · joined January 25, 2022
There's not being a dick, and then there's being a doormat. You don't want to be close to either of those extremes.
"There was an old woman that swallowed a fly" comes to mind.
Okay, so let's say it's possible, you build out a shit ton of solar power to provide the energy required to sequester all of the carbon dioxide emitted so far.
This is a properly huge undertaking. Now you've paved over some appreciable fraction of the Earth and done a load of pollution and damage mining stuff to make the panels.
If I ransack your house and throw stuff everywhere it will take you a hell of a lot more work to undo the damage than it took me to cause it. Entropy is a bitch.
I would describe it as stifling. Great if you want a Volvo. If you are ambitious you are socially ostracised.
You want to live in a place in which if you work your bollocks off, you will be rewarded handsomely for it.
The alternative is something like the UK, in which it's very difficult to "make it" because pre-existing / inherited wealth is dominant and highly paid jobs are very thin on the ground.
You don't want that. Unless you're already rich, then sure, it's great.
That worrying about whether doing bog standard everyday activities like turning on a computer and running a program is "bad" is just silly and even if it did work would cause mass anxiety.
It's not a sin tax, it's a tax on causing externalities. There is no need for an AI tax because AI is not in and of itself a thing which causes environmental damage.
Well, unless it goes Skynet, but I'm considering that out of scope.
I think that if billions of people do them, we have issues, sure.
But there is a finite carrying capacity regardless of what we do.
We could live plugged in like the Matrix and there would still be an upper bound somewhere.
It is patently nonsensical to take the behaviour of one person or even a million people, scale it to 8 billion, and then claim that it's unsustainable as a result.
We have plenty of mechanisms to prevent that from happening. One obvious one is that, as a Brit, I'm legally not permitted to move to the US and live in the same way that someone in Arizona does, which puts a cap on my lifestyle. Most people are in situations like that - ever heard of the "golden billion"?
I don't prefer driving because it is inexpensive, I prefer it because it has greater utility for me. If the cost of fuel doubled or more I would still do it, I'd just be a bit more efficient with the journeys I do make.
I'm not terrified of the tube/trains/buses, I use them. It's just a bit shit, doesn't go to loads of places I want to go, and is generally less comfortable.
I do think that bigger is better. I don't pay for someone to clean or maintain my house, I do it myself.
I haven't been told that bigger is better, it simply is. For example, just yesterday I made a table. In order to do that I needed enough space to work in and store my tools. I could not do this in a smaller house or apartment.
Theoretically I could hire a workshop or go to a hackspace but that would be substantially more hassle than just walking into my garden or the garage or whatever.
I like human interactions. Just not with endless hordes in a super dense city centre. I prefer chatting with my neighbours, or someone on a hiking trail, or having people over, etc.
It sounds as if you just have different preferences to me. Different hobbies, desires, etc. That's fine, that's why you don't prefer driving. I do.
Why should everyone live the same way? I know tons of people who prefer city life, and more still who frankly don't really think about it either way.
Surely we all operate this way? My mate goes fishing, if everyone went fishing it doesn't work, but we don't all go fishing.
I would rather spend 15 mins in my car than 15 mins on a bus. I'd rather live in a place that is sprawling because then everything is bigger - I'd rather have a large house than a small one, a large garden than a small one, and I'd rather shop at a big box store that is more likely to allow me to be hands on with everything I need vs. a teeny high street shop and ordering online.
I currently live somewhere quite urban and barely spend any time in the walkable/public transportable centre because there's not much I want to do there other than pubs and restaurants.
edit: The responses to my post are kind of weird, I'm not telling you to adopt my preferences.
It is still substantially more effective and easier than trying to look at literally every individual thing we do and guilt people into doing different things.
It's just not going to work, people will use AI anyway.
Setting the rate is more complex, but anything at all would be a start.
The endgame of that seems to be that you have two sides with some completely crackpot stances that they (hopefully?) don't even really believe in themselves, but use as a sort of identity marker.
I have to confess that personally I find some of it utterly laughable and it's hard for me to engage seriously.
Like, yeah, of course abortion should be legal, but also, being "non-binary" is just a little bit weird.
Both of those camps are, well, to put it politely, in search of a hobby.
Guilt tripping on totally arbitrary things just isn't going to work.
We already have a mechanism for managing scarce resources, it's called price, so let's just use it.
The calories burned playing a five a side football match aren't that big a deal, neither is the BMR adjustment from going to the gym unless you really go hard on it. It makes a difference, yes, but it's not the real key.
What matters is that it forces you to be to some degree mindful about what you are eating, because most sports become really shit and unenjoyable if you are out of shape, you can literally see and feel your performance decreasing.
You might have trouble if you literally only eat Cheetos and get no nutrients. You're more likely to become malnourished and sickly than obese that way.
Also, chest freezers exist, nothing is stopping you from driving and loading up the car/truck for a month or more. In the UK a 200 mile round trip would cost £30 or less in fuel, my understanding is that you Americans pay half of that.
The question ultimately comes down to whether you want it enough. I can already see the next gotcha being "what if you don't have a car" or something. Sure, if you are a waster then doing literally anything is hard, self fulfilling prophecy.
The French smoke and drink and eat crap food just like everyone else.
They just don't mess about in my experience. If you are fat, you are fat. You're not body positive, you're not big boned, you don't have a slow metabolism, you're not in a food desert, you're not even obese, you're just fat. Sort it out.
They're not afraid of calling a spade a spade.
It really is that simple when you aren't surrounded by enablers.
You can transfer cash in person by handing someone coins or notes. It might be illegal in some jurisdictions to do that for high amounts or certain items, but it is at least physically possible i.e. permissionless.
Bitcoin is that, but online.
The regulations you are describing affect what are essentially financial institutions operating on top of the system.
The act of sending Bitcoin is permissionless by design.
That's it, that's all it is. Nothing more, nothing less.
It works. What's the problem?
Are you saying that me merely using Bitcoin endangers others and is akin to driving into oncoming traffic?
edit: Sure, driving into oncoming traffic is bad. So let's criminalize and punish that, rather than banning vehicles because I could drive on the pavement and cause havoc.
Things which other people seem to readily accept, such as ATM's having limits, the nature of card payments being inherently asymmetric, the middlemen, "know your customer", etc.
All of that stuff just seems insane to me. It's as if someone were standing at my door, telling me that I can't take more than seven items out of my house per day, asking me why I'm moving furniture around, etc.
If you're happy with that stuff, great, stick with it. I'm not.
It is not and never was about "getting rich". That's the side effect of the utility of the system.
That's why none of the inner ones are on there, because they are disambiguated e.g. Kensington High Street.
King's Road in Chelsea is an example that immediately comes to mind.
Really what it comes down to is that nice areas with approximately the right density of people have nice high streets.
You could pedestrianise Oxford Street but it'd still be a grim place to be because there are hordes of people - at a certain point the people have a similar effect to cars in that it's not really pleasant to pause outside any more.
If they ran it with 18k cal per week then both would gain.
I don't think anyone thinks that macro/micronutrients and eating patterns are completely irrelevant, just that they have less effect than total calories, so IIFYM is a good starting point / first order simplification.
If they ran it with 18k cal per week then both would gain.
I don't think anyone thinks that macro/micronutrients and eating patterns are completely irrelevant, just that they have less effect than total calories, so IIFYM is a good starting point.
I would draw an analogy with say, distance running training. My understanding is that it is generally agreed that total mileage run is (within reason) the most important variable, and after that you have things like speed, intervals, other training, etc.
I'm imagining strapping 100kg+ of toolboxes to the front of my electric cargo bike. It theoretically is possible. But if someone walks out in front of that it's going to be ugly. The braking systems are nowhere near as good as a car's. If it rains it'll be miserable, I'd put up my rates significantly to compensate and a lot of people would rather just exit the market.
It feels like once you actually account for real things that need to happen like vans carting building materials, you're back where you started except that now everyone needs a license to do the same things they did before in their "personal" vehicles.
If you still have lorries and vans and buses then it feels like a lot of the safety and emission arguments fall apart really.
The people that are causing the vast majority of these issues are fly tipping or littering.
I can't remember the last time a plastic item of mine ended up "in the wild".
Now, things like micro bits of plastic going down the drain after washing the dishes or running a load of laundry, that feels like a valid target.
Not enough physical resources?
People working in the wrong jobs?
Or just, we won't?
For example if I want a specific tool it's not that uncommon that Screwfix doesn't have it in stock same day, and they are basically a warehouse with a checkout at the front.